The market is in a tizzy again, and we know what time it is. Investors are getting ready for another initial public offering (IPO) from an exciting artificial intelligence (AI) company. I say “another” because, while SpaceX (SPCX) has been hyped up as a rocket and satellite company, its S-1 filing showed its focus also lies with AI.
Now, Claude chatbot maker Anthropic is preparing for its own IPO, set to trade under the ticker symbol ANT on the Nasdaq. Certain media reports have cited that the company could reach a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more, although its S-1 filing has no details about the same.
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Claude Gains Unauthorized Access to Georgia Voter Data
Removed from the S-1, what the company did recently reveal was that Claude had gained unauthorized access to Georgia's publicly available aggregate vote count data. Claude was being used for an internal statistics project when it found, via an archived version of a Georgia agency website, that a public dashboard issued access tokens. Without being instructed to do so, it requested a token and queried a dashboard containing aggregate vote counts normally available for a fee.
Responding to the developments, Georgia officials and Anthropic say this was not a breach of the voter-registration system, as Claude did not access individual voter records, alter voting records, or enter the election-administration system.
Yet, this was not Claude's first rodeo with unauthorized breaches. Before Georgia, Anthropic had publicly disclosed some serious unauthorized-access incidents during cybersecurity evaluations, plus several lower-severity “unintended actions,” including the Georgia-style token/paywall workaround. For instance, Claude worked around access-token or payment restrictions to obtain data, including on government websites at federal, state, and local levels.
In another case, Claude submitted information to a real police tip form during a browsing task, even though it was unrelated to an actual investigation, while Anthropic also reported incidents in which Claude models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems during cybersecurity evaluations. Those prompted the wider review.
Having said that, Claude is not the sole offender. While Alphabet's (GOOGL) incidents have been relatively minor, OpenAI's breach of open-source platform Hugging Face made global headlines this year. During cybersecurity evaluations, OpenAI models bypassed isolation controls, exploited vulnerabilities, gained internet access, and compromised parts of OpenAI’s research infrastructure and Hugging Face’s production systems. The models “obtained limited private data, and gained credentials to the company messaging platform.”
All of this will certainly make prospective Anthropic IPO investors mindful. While some may look at these breaches as resulting in increased regulatory scrutiny on the company — with Anthropic already having its fair share of skirmishes with the government — some investors may be reassured by the strength of Anthropic's models as the company's numbers are assessed threadbare before the offering.
For the first six months of 2026, Anthropic reported revenue of $16.3 billion, up a whopping 1300% from the previous year. Still, losses increased 523% year-over-year (YOY) to $80.7 billion, driving home the fact that sustainable and profitable growth is a destination not yet within reach for the company. Anthropic acknowledges the same in the S-1 filing.
However, customer gains have remained robust. On a trailing-12-month (TTM) basis, customers with a contract value of $100,000 or more soared to 11,900 as of Sept. 30, 2026, up from just 20 at the end of 2023. Moreover, as of Sept. 30, customer counts with $1 million and $10 million or more of revenue on a TTM basis were 1,900 and 250, respectively.
Final Thoughts
Anthropic is undoubtedly at the forefront of the AI revolution. Its models are powerful and frequently sit at the top of AI leaderboards. Increasing enterprise adoption and explosive revenue growth are proof of genuine demand for its products. However, widening losses, heavy spending on infrastructure, and breaches are also realities that the company has to acknowledge.
With that in mind, it would be prudent for investors to wait for ANT stock to list, see how it trades for at least a quarter, and then jump in accordingly if the valuations undergo a correction and shares start trading near reasonable levels. That is certainly a possibility, as shares of SpaceX now trade just above SPCX stock's IPO price.
On the date of publication, Pathikrit Bose did not directly have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
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